A special symposium focused on research advances and needs in the geographical dimensions of land systems and land change is being organized to take place within the 2013 AAG Annual Meeting in Los Angeles. Land systems and land change are rapidly growing in importance in both research and policy at local, regional, national and international scales. Advances in understanding of the relationships of land with human and environmental systems, developments in measurement and monitoring of change, use of advanced GIS/remote sensing and modelling technologies, the increased availability of datasets, and increasing capability for modeling and analysis of change give opportunities to offer new insights into land systems and the nature of change.

The symposium will be made up of a series of paper sessions. Geographers and others with active research expertise and interests in land use, land systems and land change science will participate. This symposium builds on a long tradition of research in land use and land cover, and of coupled human and natural systems within Geography, the focus provided by the Journal of Land Use Science and Land, and interests of the land change science community.

Papers addressing the symposium theme are encouraged, and particularly papers that are directed at the provisional list of session titles. Additional sessions will be considered based on abstracts submitted. Paper sessions presenting case studies of land systems and change in different regions of the world will provide a basis for comparative analysis and synthesis; other paper sessions will explore methodological and human and environmental aspects of land systems.

Provisional session titles:

Case studies of land systems and change in

North America

Latin America

Europe

Australasia

Africa

Asia

Analysis and modeling change

Human dimensions of land systems

Environmental dimensions of land systems

Emerging issues

Titles and abstracts for papers, conforming to AAG annual meeting guidelines, initially should be submitted to Richard Aspinall (r.aspinall@abdn.ac.uk) as soon as possible and before 31 August 2012. Please indicate which of the symposium sessions your paper is most suited to.